Sensitive data such as personally identifying information, health data, financial data, employment data, and the like are often transmitted electronically over networks. However, conventional networks for sharing sensitive data such as social security numbers, are vulnerable to security attacks, such as man-in-the-middle attacks. In man-in-the-middle attacks, an attacker may obtain the sensitive data being transmitted between the two parties, while at the same time secretly relaying (and possibly altering) the transmitted sensitive data, without either of the two parties being aware of the attack.
Further, conventional systems are vulnerable to security attacks because in conventional systems sensitive data is often stored in a central location. It is possible that although information is transmitted and stored in an encrypted format, as the computational power of computers increases, the ability to decrypt the information stored in the central location will also increase.